Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw Read Free Book Online Page B

looking me up and down.
    “Greetings, Lord Julius Priscus,” I returned, now feeling quite dizzy with anxiety. “Greetings to you all.”
    He grunted, and nodded for the steward to begin serving the wine. The others were all reclining on their couches, the legate and his wife in the top place, the married tribune and his wife on the right, and the two others on the left. I did not know where to sit, so I remained standing. I sipped my wine when it was handed to me, wondering what they had heard to make them so disapproving. Then I noticed a letter lying on the table in front of the legate, and guessed that Facilis had sent it, and that it had been read aloud just before I came in.
    “Is it true,” growled Priscus, “that you’ve been telling Lucius Comittus that he should call himself a liaison officer to your troops, instead of a prefect?”
    “Yes,” I agreed. I repeated my explanation of why. Comittus gave me another nervous smile, then plucked up his courage and moved over on his couch, allowing me to sit down. I was glad to sit. My leg was aching.
    “And you’re threatening us with trouble if we don’t go along with this?” demanded Priscus when I’d finished. “You told Lucius that your friend Arsacus would kill him if he called himself commander?”
    “No, my lord,” I replied. “I am not threatening, but warning you of trouble. I should not have spoken as I did about Arshak; I cannot say for certain what he would or would not do—but I know our men would rebel. They are angry and afraid anyway. To them the ocean is the end of the world: I am here because they doubted there was anything beyond it, and were afraid of a Roman plot to drown them. A foreign commander could hardly escape offending them. I do not want problems any more than you do. It is my own people who would suffer most.”
    “We’ve been hearing about your own people,” said Priscus.
    “My lord,” I said, “if Flavius Facilis has written to you, I would ask you to remember that his son was killed in the war this last summer, and he is tormented with grief. His judgment of us is not altogether reasonable.”
    The shot went home. I could see them all realizing that Facilis had not written as a senior centurion handing over a charge, but as a man driven by passions like the rest of us, and that I’d known he hated us. They all relaxed a little.
    “So it’s not true,” said Priscus, “that this fellow Arshak has a coat stitched with Roman scalps?”
    I was silent a moment. “It is true,” I admitted.
    “And that he, and your other colleague Gatalas, made themselves bow cases from the skin of Romans they killed in battle?”
    “That is true, as well.”
    “And that you yourself,” Priscus demanded, glaring at me, “once killed a Roman centurion who tried to stop you when you were attacking Roman settlements in the province of Lower Pannonia—killed him with a rope and a dagger, cut off his head, and made his skull into a drinking cup, which you have to this day?”
    “I do not have it to this day,” I replied. “The man’s family came to me at Aquincum and I gave it to them for burial.”
    “But the rest of the story is true?”
    “Yes.”
    “I do not see how you can think yourself fit to be a Roman officer. Jupiter! You’re not fit to live!”
    “My lord,” I said tightly, “I have not observed that the Romans at war behave with decency and moderation. Perhaps you do not collect scalps, but you murder indiscriminately to injure your enemies, killing even young children. And I have heard Roman soldiers complaining at Sarmatian women, calling them vicious bitches because they took up arms to defend their babies, and had to be killed before they could be raped.” I had to stop for a moment. A shadow of the helpless rage I’d felt when I’d heard the complaint choked me. I managed to continue more calmly, “My lord, you yourself must have decorated men for their bravery in doing things in war which, if they had